ABSTRACT
Cosmopolitanism has long been the prerogative of certain elites frequently associated with urban environments. Indeed it is commonplace to perceive of cosmopolitans as rootless universalists who situate themselves outside the national community. However, recent advances in the literature direct our attention to extensive cosmopolitan imaginations permeating diverse geographies, strata of society and the political, cultural and legal domains of many countries (Delanty 2009, Levy and Sznaider 2010). In this chapter we argue that global changes have ushered in new forms of memory cultures transforming the national premises that hitherto dominated collective identifications, breaking down the dichotomy between local and cosmopolitan solidarities. More specifically, we deploy collective memory as analytic lens to focus on how public negotiations over past human rights abuses shape the balance of universal prescriptions and particular forms of solidarity. The emergence of a Human Rights Regime, we suggest, reflects the political-cultural and institutional embodiment of a new cosmopolitanism through which global concerns and local experiences become enmeshed.
